the heart-rending suffering of the poor operatives. Would that my pen was powerful enough to draw aside the veil, and reveal in all its ghastliness and the wretchedness of the once happy homes. Yet it is fearful to contemplate what the result will be if the winter should find the relieving committees unprepared. In rags and in tatters, without food, without shelter, with disease marked in their pale faces, so shall we see our poor unfortunate countrymen and women overrunning the country, and the people becoming accustomed to such sights of wretchedness, may grow callous and indifferent. When I look around and behold the many noble institutions which are supported in this place by voluntary contributions, I cannot avoid thinking, Mr. Editor, that you are blessed here with people who have the fear of God in their hearts, and who bear goodwill and love to their fellow creatures. Surely there, I will be pardoned for raising my feeble supplication for help. To the women of Hastings and St. Leonards I would especially say - Bestir yourselves in this good work! Above all things, make it a matter of earnest prayer. Permit me to suggest. sir, that after every concert of other public amusement, or wherever Englishmen of English women meet - be it for prayer or for pleasure, for joy or for sorrow, poor Lancashire be not forgotten. - As regards the ultimate solving the difficulty by means of the Consolidated Fund, let your readers be aware that Lancashire must be on the verge of the most hopeless ruin before Government will adopt so unprecedented a measure.
I am, sir, your very obedient servant,
Lucy H. Sherrington.
St. Leonards (illegible text) 30.
Concurrently with the publication of the above letter was another article in the St. Leonards Gazette as follows:-
The letter of a Lancashire woman, which we this day publish, and the epistle of a physician, transferred from the Times to our own columns, sufficiently show the accuracy of our last week's remarks upon the distress in the cotton districts, and go far to prove that the suggestions we made for the collection of funds were not only desirable to be acted upon, but almost imperatively necessary. Week by week the suffering grows deeper and the circle of misery expands. It is said that there are no fewer than 150,000 operatives entirely out of work, while nearly as many are on short time. Not less than £32,000 per week will meet this extensive pauperism; and the country generally, as near as can be estimated supplies only half this amount, Lancashire, Cheshire and Yorkshire having to make up the other moiety. So much has been said and written about this destress, that we will now only add that it is the duty of everyone in the present crisis to do something as far as in him lies for the relief of a suffering that is not like so much other suffering - self imposed. But we -
